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Overview

Call Number: SC1093

Creator:
Breiner, S., (Sheldon)

Title: Sheldon Breiner photograph collection

Dates: 1955-2008

Physical Description:
14540.8 megabyte(s) (8267 computer files)

Summary: The materials consist of scans and digital photographs taken by Sheldon Breiner documenting his undergraduate days and the
Stanford campus.

Language(s): The materials are in English.

Repository:
Department of Special Collections and University Archives

Green Library

557 Escondido Mall

Stanford, CA 94305-6064

Email: specialcollections@stanford.edu

Phone: (650) 725-1022

URL: http://library.stanford.edu/spc

Administrative Information

Information about Access

The materials are open for research use. Audio-visual materials are not available in original format, and must be reformatted
to a digital use copy.

Ownership & Copyright

All requests to reproduce, publish, quote from, or otherwise use collection materials must be submitted in writing to the
Head of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, California 94304-6064. Consent
is given on behalf of Special Collections as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission
from the copyright owner. Such permission must be obtained from the copyright owner, heir(s) or assigns. See: http://library.stanford.edu/depts/spc/pubserv/permissions.html.

Restrictions also apply to digital representations of the original materials. Use of digital files is restricted to research
and educational purposes.

Cite As

[identification of item], Sheldon Breiner Photograph Collection (SC1093). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives,
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Biographical/Historical note

Sheldon Breiner is a scientist trained in geophysics and specializing in exploration and research of the earth. Much of his
career involves remote sensing for mineral and cultural resources through airborne, oceanographic and land based geophysical
surveying. He received a B.S. (1959), M.S. (1962), and Ph.D. (1967), all in Geophysics, from Stanford University. As Chairman
of UBIQ Networks, Inc. and as a typical Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur, he uses New Ventures West to launch high-tech
start-ups. Breiner is currently chairman and founder of Potential Energy, proprietary database company that will produce maps
of petroleum resources in the all the world's oceans using data from a once-secret government project in which he was involved
and analysis methods initiated by him years ago as his MS thesis at Stanford. He was also awarded a patent June, 2009, for
a technology-based solution to the distracted driving problem – the only one put forth at the recent Summit in Wash. D.C.
that changes the behavior of drivers, warns trailing drivers, but does not completely ban cell calls while driving. He is
on track to have it underwritten by the insurance industry as an after-market device and, if successful, mandated by the government
for new cars sold in the U.S. He was the founder and president for 15 years of GeoMetrics, Inc., world-wide airborne geophysical
survey contractor for oil and mineral exploration and a manufacturer of land, marine and airborne geophysical instruments,
now a San Jose-based subsidiary of OYO Corp. of Japan. Breiner was co-founder and CEO of PML, Inc., which developed technology
for finding oil between existing wells and for monitoring the oil-water interface for the ‘automated oil field’ licensed to
Schlumberger and later acquired by Baker Hughes. An investor and board member, he was the interim CEO of 3DGeo, Inc. a Houston
seismic imaging provider of software and services to the petroleum industry sold to FusionGeo, and is currently the Managing
Member of 3DGeo’s South American subsidiary with assets in Brazil and Argentina. He was a director of ESP, Inc., environmental
software for emission allowances and cap-and trade markets, sold in 2008 to IHS, database services for the energy industry.
He was also the founder and CEO of Syntelligence (expert systems for commercial banking and insurance), Solis Therapeutics
(therapy, prevention for viral disease), and Quorum Software (purveyor of Macintosh applications such as Photoshop, Word,
Excel) for Sun, HP, IBM; a founding investor in Sherpa and Calera. He was an investor in several high technology partnerships
such as Sequoia Technology Partners II, Foothill Associates, Founder's Fund (biotech), El Dorado Venture Partners, and, as
a consequence, a founding shareholder in Cisco, Nellcor, Myriad Genetics and similar. He has been a pioneer in unconventional
applications of magnetometers such as earthquake research, geophysical techniques for archaeological exploration, search for
buried and sunken objects and various marine and airborne magnetic methods for military or security purposes. In the latter
was a consultant to various branches of the US government involved with detection of submarines, mines, tunnels, weapons and
other ordnance. Breiner demonstrated, in 1968, the first gun detector at the request of the White House, for security purposes
at airports and buildings around the world. He holds several U.S. patents in exploration, Internet technology and related
applications and patents pending in other technologies. He has been involved with many archaeological projects using geophysics
to map and unearth a buried 450 BC Greek city in Italy, recently located a Manila galleon, circa 1576, offshore Mexico and
discovered, using a magnetometer over 100 colossal monuments buried for 3,000 years in the jungles of Mexico, the latter earning
him the moniker, in his professional field, as the "Indiana Jones of Geophysics." Breiner is a Fellow, by invitation, in the
Explorers Club of New York and appears in Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon Valley Pioneers. He is a co-founder
and former trustee of the Peninsula Open Space Trust, a conservation group which has acquired, for public enjoyment, more
than 70,000 acres in the San Francisco Bay area. Breiner is member of the Advisory Board of a non-profit to aid in finding
and removing landmines around the world. He is on the Board of Directors of SEAM, the recently-formed leading-edge technical
non-profit company owned by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the principal organization in the world dedicated to
technology for oil and mineral exploration. SEAM’s mission is to conduct computer studies for the world-wide benefit of finding
large deposits of oil and gas, sequestering CO2, among other objectives, all financed and assisted by the world’s leading
oil and oil service companies. Breiner was a member for 17 years of the Advisory Council of the School of Earth Sciences at
Stanford University. He is an occasional lecturer at the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford and on entrepreneurial topics
at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Heiland Lecturer at Colorado School of Mines. Breiner is the chairman
of the Geologic Safety Committee of the Town of Portola Valley, which sits astride the San Andreas fault. He has designed
and directed the construction of an online seismograph for this town to record earthquakes, and he has written and/or presented
a few hundred technical papers and the technical reference on the use magnetometers for surveying with over a million copies
in print.

He is married with two grown children and resides in Portola Valley.

Scope and Contents

The materials consist of scans and digital photographs taken by Sheldon Breiner documenting his undergraduate days and the
Stanford campus.